Fritinancy

The Wind Beneath My Wings

Time for another episode of Slang Terms for Unwanted Body Features! (Need to review? Go here.) This week the term is "bingo wings," which I encountered for the first time in this blog post over at The Thoughtful Dresser. None of the commenters expressed puzzlement over the usage, so perhaps I'm late to the party. Here's the Wikipedia definition, which (shock!) is not notable for its objectivity:

Bingo wings is a slang term used to describe the build-up of fat and or flaccid muscle that hangs from the underside of the upper arms. It occurs most frequently in elderly ladies and overweight people. The problem may also occur after significant weight loss, with flaps of loose skin remaining. The term apparently originated from the bingo hall custom of raising one's arm aloft and bellowing "House!". This ties in due to bingo long being the entertainment of choice for large numbers of elderly ladies, especially in the United Kingdom.

Especially in the United Kingdom? Wow, that's really news to me. Who knew bingo was so big over there? On the other hand, are we even talking about the same bingo? Here's what I'm talking about:

I'm picturing multiple gridded cards, randomly selected balls, a caller ("B-54! G-16!"), and an array of lucky fetish objects lined up in front of each player's playing area.

But in my version of bingo--the Las Vegas version, the Reno version, the church-fundraiser version--nobody bellows "House!" The only word to bellow is, of course, "Bingo!"*

So maybe the UK bingo is this game, also known as housie or housey:

This looks scarily like the inscrutable Sudoku to me, so I'm just going to tiptoe away.

There's also a card game called bingo. News to me, but my card-playing expertise reached its peak with Go Fish.

Back to the wings. It's not as though I've never seen the phenomenon or heard it described--just not in this very evocative way. I've heard "underarm flaps," which is accurate if a bit pedestrian. And I've heard "bat wings," which sounds so much uglier and less jovial than "bingo wings." Besides, "bingo wings" has that charming little internal rhyme that makes the condition seem almost cute.

Not to a plastic surgeon, though. If you're unhappy with your bingo wings, you may want to consult someone like this for a "procedure"--a brachioplasty, to use the term of art.

Hey, he'll probably do a FUPA-plasty, too.

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* "Bingo" is also a term in Scrabble: it's a play in which all seven tiles are used, earning the player a bonus of 50 points. I never knew this until I started playing computer Scrabble.

Code Talkers

John McIntyre of You Don't Say reveals what's really meant by "grow the business," a phrase that sets certain sets of teeth on edge:

Grow the business, like all cant phrases, does have a meaning, but it’s not the ostensible one. It is a signal for people who sit in meetings and write memos. It is like the secret handshake or the foot-tapping on the floor of the men’s room stall; it signals I am one of you, and, having accomplished that, it need carry no further freight.

See also the observations of Editrix and Words to the Wise.

In related news, Mr. Verb answers a reader's question about another bit of corpspeak, to consense.

Below the Belt

It seems to me that as the concept of "appropriate attire" vanishes from the public sphere--pajamas in the supermarket? why not, dude?--and the evidence of excessive caloric intake is ever more visible, our language for describing shameless bodily displays is becoming correspondingly more inventive, elaborate, and body-part-specific. I am naturally thinking of cameltoe (a k a "the other cleavage"), a startlingly apt and vivid metaphor, especially considering that its users are unlikely to be Bedouins or zookeepers. Then there's muffin-top (a k a "belly roll"), which seems to have originated in an Australian sitcom, "Kath and Kim"; it was named Australia's word of the year for 2006 and is now almost as international as "OK."

New to me, but well known to the cool kids for some time now, is FUPA, which I first encountered earlier this week in Kersten's comment on a You Look Fab post. It's an acronym, which allows for some definitional flexibility. Acronym Finder defines it as "Fat Upper Pelvic Area," while the most popular definition on Urban Dictionary is "Fat Upper Pubic Area." Both interpretations suggest gender neutrality. However, the group singing "The FUPA Song" (watch the YouTube video) assigns an unequivocally feminine meaning to the "P" in FUPA. (Read the comments for some alternate glosses.)

If you're still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, you can check out the photos at FUPA Hunter, but don't say I didn't warn you. This is raw, in-your-FUPA documentation. This is muffin-top on steroids, inhuman growth hormones, and a side of fries.

May Linkfest

Lots o' links this month, so make yourself comfortable.

Haikuvies: Tell a movie's plot/In seventeen syllables/Spoilers? Sure--why not? (Actually, you get 17 times seven.)

It took about 24 hours for a meme called When Obama Wins to make the leap from Twitter to the whole wide web. Gather round, children, and hear Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path tell the origin story:

I'm never sure about how internet memes start, but this one started with a typo.

Dan was twittering something about Alabama, but wrote "Alambama". He joked that when Barack Obama wins the election, certain states will probably be renamed Alobama, Califobama, Nevama, Massabama, New Yobama. Of course, I thought that was hilarious and started thinking about other things that would change once Obama wins. So, a few of us started twittering silly little things, thinking of it as an inside joke.

Overnight, a few people caught on giving it a life of its own.

Jason Kottke took this and mashed it up to create this really cool microsite.

I think what interests me the most about these is how fast they spread. It's been less than 24 hours and there are already over 500 tweets about it. Certainly taken on a life of it's own.

Which is the perfect segue to my favorite WOW so far: "When Obama wins ... everyone will know the difference between its and it's." (By 111archeravenue.)

I considered saving this for Halloween, but death is always in season at Fatal Utterances, "a glossary of slang, jargon, euphemism, and cant as used by undertakers, criminals, consumer activists, and the ordinary people." Some favorite entries: bier baron (a funeral-parlor owner), Mrs. Z (a corpse), and Stare Number 12 ("the look that passes over a man's face as he regards another man as a meal").

The idea behind Brand Tags is that a brand is whatever people say it is. Go there and give your one-word impressions of brands like Gap, Starbucks, Yahoo, Greenpeace, Whole Foods, and many more. (It's all over Twitter now, but I heard it first from Rowland Hobbs, whose tags I follow on Del.icio.us.)

The Big Word Project is selling words at $1 a letter. "Search for your word and link it to your website. Your website is then the new definition." Started by a couple of graduate students in Northern Ireland.

You probably know about Stuff White People Like, which reportedly is being turned into a book. (What do white people like? Coffee, Asian girls, Ivy League schools--stuff like that.) Now Andrew Hammel, an American in Germany, offers Stuff White Germans Like: #3 Balkan disco music, #5 custom-designed bookshelves, #11 Paul Auster. (Really? Paul Auster?)

Roy Peter Clark is serializing his next book, The Glamour of Grammar, on his Poynter Online blog (Poynter's slogan: "Everything You Need to Be a Better Journalist"). He's inviting readers to make suggestions and correct errors. His goal is to present "not a comprehensive grammar, but an essential grammar: those elements of language that the reader and writer can use today and every day." Even if you groan at the mention of grammar, read this series: it's lively and engaging and wildly informative. (Yes, glamour of grammar. You knew the two words were related, didn't you? Roy explains in his first installment)

Mike Pope on the seven stages of being edited:

3) Anger

I'm starting to get irritated. What the -- ? That's a stupid edit. And so's that one. Ha! That's just wrong! Smartypants editors, think they know everything! Well, let me just set that editor straight ...

And speaking of anger, here's the Baltimore Sun's John McIntyre on "Those Damn Copy Editors," in which he addresses the complaint of "someone named Seth Godin"¹ that a copy editor "totally wrecked" his work:

Unfortunately, Mr. Godin does not supply a single instance of the copy editor's destructiveness, so it is up for discussion whether he is an injured author or a fulminating boor. (The other texts at his blog do not suggest that revision of his prose would be a cultural catastrophe.)

Catching his breath, McIntyre offers some very sensible suggestions for improving relations between writers and copy editors.

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¹ Guru Supremo of hip marketing manifestos and, according to one of McIntyre's commenters, "author of the most popular ebook ever."

Word of the Week: BLAD

BLAD: Publishing-industry term for a short advance version of a book--usually the jacket art and several sample pages--that gives a publicist or distributor the gist of the contents and design. Said to be an acronym of Basic Layout And Design; however, it may be a backronym from blad, Scots dialect for "a section" or "a fragment."

Read more about publishing-industry jargon here.

Euphemism Watch: "Post-Kinetic Development"

Listening in a desultory fashion to today's Congressional testimony of senior Iraq commander General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, I caught this phrase, uttered by Crocker in  his prepared remarks in apparent reference to stuff that's rising from the rubble:

"post-kinetic development"

Best of Both Worlds caught it, too.

Here's the full quote, from the Wake Up America blog:

As Iraq is now earning the financial resources it needs for bricks and mortar construction through oil production and export, our primary focus has shifted to capacity development and an emphasis on local and post-kinetic development through our network of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and ministerial advisors.

It's not the first time Crocker has demonstrated a predilection for "post-kinetic." Last September,  Newsweek.com writer Weston Kosova caught Crocker referring to bombed-out Iraqi towns as "post-kinetic environments." That "show-stopping war euphemism" (Kosova's words) has been enshrined in Double-Tongued Dictionary.

Kinetic means "of, pertaining to, or relating to motion" or "active, dyanmic, full of energy." In its new (post-modern?) context, post-kinetic has a clinical ring that makes the Iraq fiasco sound like particle physics. Or, alternately, like an experimental dance troupe: "Choreographer Paxton Glissade dispenses with the conventions of movement, preferring instead to place his artists in positions of post-kinetic ennui."

Well, you know what they say. Kinesis is hell.

More on military lingo here and here.

Xerox Goes Lower Case

After more than a century of all capitals, Xerox has introduced a new lower-case logo--or, as the company prefers to put it, "unveiled the most sweeping transformation of its corporate identity in the company's history."

Gone are the elegant, austere, sharply angled sans-serif capitals. In their place are "engaging and approachable" round letters, according to Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, quoted in the New York Times. The chubby new logo, created by multinational branding agency Interbrand from a proprietary new font called Xerox Sans, comes with its own toy: a red ball marked with a white X. The ball will bounce around in multimedia presentations and, presumably, advertisements; it's supposed to suggest "forward movement and 'a holistic company,'" according to Interbrand strategist Maryann J. Stump. According to Xerox's Mulcahy, the ball "represents the connection to customers, partners, industry and innovation."

Also to stoopball, paddleball, jacks, and other childhood games.

Xerox may be a bubbling font of innovative goodness, but the press release announcing the new look is an insipid stew of corpspeak studded with clichés:

• customer-centric
• values-rich
• content-rich
• digital marketplace
• bold statement [is there ever any other kind?]
• sweeping statement [ah, yes--that kind]
• leveraging new technologies
• cutting-edge products
• unprecedented speeds
• tech-savvy

In other words, a Xerox copy of all the other Fortune 500 press releases you've ever received.

The Times story is accompanied by an interesting timeline of Xerox's brand evolution. I hadn't known, or remembered, that the company was officially "Haloid Xerox" until 1961.

(Hat tip to Brandflakes for Breakfast.)

Update: Mark Landkamer, a friend and colleague, notes that the Times timeline omitted the "digital X" logo that was created in the 1980s by branding giant Landor--"and which is still better and fresher than what Xerox just came up with":

Word of the Week: Grammelot

Grammelot: A type of gibberish spoken in satirical theater, especially Commedia dell'Arte. It incorporates elements of onomatopoeia (imitation of sounds, such as "whoosh") and macaronisms (words formed from a mixture of languages).

The international troupe Cirque de Soleil has invented its own form of Grammelot, which it calls Cirquish.

The origin and history of the word "Grammelot" are unclear. Here's one hypothesis, and a short lexicon, from a Grammelot practitioner. For other views, read some interesting Language Log posts on Grammelot.

From CHUville to REMFland: Iraq War Slang

Posting on ADS-L, the listserv of the American Dialect Society, Bill Mullins linked to this lexicon of slang from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Some choice bits:

• Battle rattle: "Full battle rattle is close to 50 pounds worth of gear, including a flak vest, Kevlar helmet, gas mask, ammunition, weapons, and other basic military equipment."
• CHU : Containerized Housing Unit (pronounced “choo”) - An aluminum box slightly larger [22'x8'] than a commercial shipping container, with linoleum floors and cots or beds inside. A "wet CHU" contains a shower and a toilet; a "CHUville" is a base consisting of a large number of CHUs.
• Frankenstein: "A Marine Corps monster truck, bulging and rippling with spot-welded seams of add on armor."
• POG: People Other than Grunts [pronounced "pogue"] = rear-echelon support troops.
• Remfland: "the rear-echelon areas where support personnel live and work in relative safety -- the paradox being that in the Sandbox, unlike Vietnam, REMFland is more a state of mind than a physical location."
• Sandbox: Iraq
• Sandpit: Iraq

I wrote about other warrior slang back in March.

Iconoclasm

San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King would like to see a moratorium on the use of "icon" by architects and their "enablers":

The word should be banished from the world of design, and with it the notion that the worth of new buildings is measured by how much they stick out - vertically, stylistically, you name it.

King has been reading the proposals from the teams competing to build a new transbay transportation terminal and tower in San Francisco. All three of the front-runners use the i-word.

England's Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, working with a local architecture firm and two developers, calls its design "a strong and iconic portal," an "iconic gateway," and "an iconic expression of San Francisco's position as the center of gravity for new technologies, creativity, multi-cultural initiatives and knowledge leadership." (That last phrase merits enshrinement in the Towering Babble Hall of Fame.)

"Wow," King comments. "No wonder it's so hard to find a place to park."

The other two teams offer, respectively, "a memorable icon" and "a slender iconic shape acting as a beacon from all approaches."

Across the bay in Emeryville, two new residential developments are actually called Icon @ Park and Icon @ Doyle. For those not familiar with Emeryville, it's a slender sub-municipal strip of land that until the 1990s was known mostly for its legal card rooms. Today it's where you go around here to get your Trader Joe's and Banana Republic fix. There is nothing iconic about Emeryville except perhaps for the symbols on the computer screens at Pixar headquarters.

Image: an icon of Saint Stylianos of Paphlagonia.